Was Orlando shooting terror or homophobia? Yes.

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Police investigate the back of the Pulse nightclub in Orlando on Sunday, June 12. At least 49 people were killed there by Omar Mateen, who was shot and killed by Orlando police. It was the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

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Bodies arrive at the medical examiner's office on June 12.

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Friends and family react after a list of hospitalized victims is released June 12 outside a hotel near the Orlando Regional Medical Center.

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She says attack points up the need for Americans to find common ground

Frida Ghitis is a world affairs columnist for The Miami Herald and World Politics Review, and a former CNN producer and correspondent. Follow her @FridaGhitis. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN)The moment the news about the shooting in Orlando started dribbling through social media -- first an ominous, familiar drip, then a hemorrhage of horror -- we could see the political alignments beginning to take shape and steadily build in intensity.

Doctors were pleading for blood donations and desperate families were still trying to locate their loved ones. But already the political potency of the tragedy began to rise up, inescapably, like a harsh light over the horizon.

In the many ideological battles raging in our turbulent, confused world, the massacre in a gay nightclub in an American city looked like it would hand a victory to one side and a defeat to another; it would provide evidence, empirical evidence, to bolster certain points of view about some of the fiercest social disagreements in our fast-changing world. But which?

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And then something happened. Instead of the usual relatively clear-cut rundown of evidence, the facts in this case seemed to step all over the battle lines. And Americans now find themselves facing a moment where the sanest reaction in the face of insanity — especially in a particularly ugly political season — is to do the unthinkable: reach for common ground.

The events of the day took us on a tour of this struggle — and showed why it must draw us, ineluctably, together.

From the early hours everyone kept a close eye on the details. Would this turn out to be a shooting by a Muslim extremist motivated, as so many others before, by a vile ideology of anti-Western, anti-modern tenets, and thus fuel arguments over foreign and domestic policy regarding immigration, the Middle East and radicalism?

Would it become another touchstone for debating the teachings of Islam, with the discussion moving across the line from reasonable debate to blunt prejudice and then back over that other line that says the subject cannot be broached at all?

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Or would this turn out to be another tragedy with that rough texture that has become much too familiar in America: a seemingly random killing, a "mass casualty shooting," with no connection to Islam or geopolitics; perhaps another case of a mentally ill individual with easy access to deadly weapons?

Or maybe this would be one of those "domestic terrorism" cases, linked to political hot button issues, disagreements about morality or religion, killings in the name of another brand of fundamentalism?

Would it trigger a discussion about what is a hate crime and what is terrorism when the killer is an American who targets members of a particular minority?

Would the Monday TV news shows book guests to talk about ISIS, or about homophobia or LGBT acceptance?

The question was not only being asked in America. Overseas the media asked "Homophobia or Terrorism?"-- as if the choice were binary; as if the two were mutually exclusive, which, as we know all too well, is quite contrary to facts. Homophobia and terrorism can be conjoined twins.

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Parents wait for news after a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Wednesday, February 14. At least 17 people were killed at the school, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said. The suspect, 19-year-old former student Nikolas Cruz, is in custody, the sheriff said. The sheriff said he was expelled for unspecified disciplinary reasons.

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Investigators at the scene of a mass shooting at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, on Sunday, November 5, 2017. A man opened fire inside the small community church, killing at least 25 people and an unborn child. The gunman, 26-year-old Devin Patrick Kelley, was found dead in his vehicle. He was shot in the leg and torso by an armed citizen, and he had a self-inflicted gunshot to the head, authorities said.

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A couple huddles after shots rang out at a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip on Sunday, October 1, 2017. At least 58 people were killed and almost 500 were injured when a gunman opened fire on the crowd. Police said the gunman, 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, fired from the Mandalay Bay hotel, several hundred feet southwest of the concert grounds. He was found dead in his hotel room, and authorities believe he killed himself and that he acted alone. It is the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history.

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Police direct family members away from the scene of a shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in June 2016. Omar Mateen, 29, opened fire inside the club, killing at least 49 people and injuring more than 50. Police fatally shot Mateen during an operation to free hostages that officials say he was holding at the club.

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In December 2015, two shooters killed 14 people and injured 21 at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California, where employees with the county health department were attending a holiday event. The shooters, Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik, were later killed in a shootout with authorities. The pair were found to be radicalized extremists who planned the shootings as a terror attack, investigators said.

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Police search students outside Umpqua Community College after a deadly shooting at the school in Roseburg, Oregon, in October 2015. Nine people were killed and at least nine were injured, police said. The gunman, Chris Harper-Mercer, committed suicide after exchanging gunfire with officers, a sheriff said.

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A man kneels across the street from the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, following a shooting in June 2015. Police say the suspect, Dylann Roof, opened fire inside the church, killing nine people. According to police, Roof confessed and told investigators he wanted to start a race war. He was eventually convicted of murder and hate crimes, and a jury recommended the death penalty.

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Police officers walk on a rooftop at the Washington Navy Yard after a shooting rampage in the nation's capital in September 2013. At least 12 people and suspect Aaron Alexis were killed, according to authorities.

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Connecticut State Police evacuate Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012. Adam Lanza opened fire in the school, killing 20 children and six adults before killing himself. Police said he also shot and killed his mother in her Newtown home.

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James Holmes pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to a July 2012 shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. Twelve people were killed and dozens were wounded when Holmes opened fire during the midnight premiere of "The Dark Knight Rises." He was sentenced to 12 life terms plus thousands of years in prison.

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A military jury convicted Army Maj. Nidal Hasan of 13 counts of premeditated murder for a November 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas. Thirteen people died and 32 were injured.

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Jiverly Wong shot and killed 13 people at the American Civic Association in Binghamton, New York, before turning the gun on himself in April 2009, police said. Four other people were injured at the immigration center shooting. Wong had been taking English classes at the center.

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Pallbearers carry a casket of one of Michael McLendon's 10 victims. McLendon shot and killed his mother in her Kingston, Alabama, home, before shooting his aunt, uncle, grandparents and five more people. He shot and killed himself in Samson, Alabama, in March 2009.

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Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho went on a shooting spree on the school's campus in April 2007. Cho killed two people at the West Ambler Johnston dormitory and, after chaining the doors closed, killed another 30 at Norris Hall, home to the Engineering Science and Mechanics Department. He wounded an additional 17 people before killing himself.

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Mark Barton walked into two Atlanta trading firms and fired shots in July 1999, leaving nine dead and 13 wounded, police said. Hours later, police found Barton at a gas station in Acworth, Georgia, where he pulled a gun and killed himself. The day before, Barton had bludgeoned his wife and his two children in their Stockbridge, Georgia, apartment, police said.

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Eric Harris, left, and Dylan Klebold brought guns and bombs to Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, in April 1999. The students gunned down 13 and wounded 23 before killing themselves.

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In October 1991, George Hennard crashed his pickup through the plate-glass window of Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, before shooting 23 people and committing suicide.

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James Huberty shot and killed 21 people, including children, at a McDonald's in San Ysidro, California, in July 1984. A police sharpshooter killed Huberty an hour after the rampage began.

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Prison guard George Banks is led through the Luzerne County courthouse in 1985. Banks killed 13 people, including five of his children, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in September 1982. He was sentenced to death in 1993 and received a stay of execution in 2004. His death sentence was overturned in 2010.

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Officers in Austin, Texas, carry victims across the University of Texas campus after Charles Joseph Whitman opened fire from the school's tower, killing 16 people and wounding 30 in 1966. Police officers shot and killed Whitman, who had killed his mother and wife earlier in the day.

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Howard Unruh, a World War II veteran, shot and killed 13 of his neighbors in Camden, New Jersey, in 1949. Unruh barricaded himself in his house after the shooting. Police overpowered him the next day. He was ruled criminally insane and committed to a state mental institution.

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As the tally of horror ticked up, making the mass shooting at the Pulse club in Orlando the deadliest in U.S. history, the question of the perpetrator and his motives seemed to become even more important, the stakes higher. In the midst of a hyperpolarized U.S. political season, the stakes grew even greater. There were points to score, costs to pay.

If this had turned out to have been a random shooting without an ideology behind it, gun control advocates could count it as evidence in favor of their preferred argument; another grim example of how urgent it is to stop the proliferation of firearms in America.

And given that the victims were at a gay club, it would have made it a clear-cut case in favor of progressive politics. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has not been a particularly fervent advocate of gun control, brought up the need for new gun laws during an appearance on "Meet the Press."

And in Texas, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick tweeted (and then deleted) a bible verse "reap what you sow," which some took as outrageous affront to the gay victims, although Patrick's campaign said it had been "previously scheduled."

But the FBI and others said the killer, Omar Mateen, had suspected links with Islamic extremists.

It turns out that he may have been motivated by both homophobia and Islamic radicalism. That should not come as a surprise. We have seen fundamentalist Islamic governments execute young gay men, and terrorist groups have done it in their own gruesome way.

Terrorism or homophobia? The answer is yes. Both.

Perhaps the Orlando massacre can indeed help us accept some common ground.

Can we agree that killing human beings is morally reprehensible and draw a circle of humanity that leaves out those who reject that basic notion? Vast majorities of people of all religions would accept that.

Can we agree that there are Islamic extremists killing people, Muslims, Christians, Jews, gays and others, and that letting them have unfettered access to weapons in the United States is a dangerous proposition?

Maybe it's too much to expect that the killings in Orlando would help us find this common ground. But in a time when the world feels like it's becoming unmoored, it's worth a try.